


we’ll take on the world together (let’s make forever in this moment)

by watyonameisgurl



Series: i'm bonnie, you can be clyde [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Bootlegging, Great Depression, Historical Inaccuracies (probably), M/M, implied prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21965320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watyonameisgurl/pseuds/watyonameisgurl
Summary: Liam can’t help the sudden sense of foreboding that overtakes him and the ensuing knot of worry that settles itself in the pit of his stomach.“You don’t think something bad has happened, do you?” he says, voice small as he climbs onto the bike behind Zayn, afraid to even voice the words out loud lest it make them come true.“Course not, babe, I’m sure they’re fine,” Zayn answers, turning to press a quick, comforting kiss to Liam’s temple. “Frank clearly knows more than he’s letting on, but whatever’s going on I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. ‘Sides we’ll be at the house in no time where we can ask them ourselves. Don’t you worry your pretty little head.”(or: Zayn and Liam are finally coming home to their boys. Or so they believe. Things don’t go quite how they expect)
Relationships: Zayn Malik/Liam Payne
Series: i'm bonnie, you can be clyde [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/698890
Kudos: 8





	we’ll take on the world together (let’s make forever in this moment)

**Author's Note:**

> never thought this series would take me over 2 and a half years to finish…but hey at least i didn’t make it to 3 years right lol? and anyway better late than never...hope you enjoy :)

Liam and Zayn cruise back into their favorite city thrumming with excitement. They haven’t seen their boys in what feels like ages. They’ve kept in contact as much as they could of course; Zayn and Liam stopping by for visits from time to time as much as they could manage when their travels brought them nearby again, exchanging letters and telegrams whenever the two of them were in one place long enough to have a steady location for the other boys to send mail to. Once they’d even managed to arrange a real, bonafide telephone call – Zayn and Liam lucky enough to be at a rare motel that could actually afford one of the new-fangled things at their front desk and Louis sly enough to convince a richer client to let him and his boys use hers. It was a strange but fascinating wonder to hear their voices while still miles away, but more importantly it was just nice to be able to even talk to them again after so long even if it was rather faraway and tinny-sounding, like yelling at each other through a windy cave. But they’re both excited nonetheless to finally be back. And there’ll be no more of that crazy telephone business for the foreseeable future. Because now that they’re back they’re here to stay.

As they turn onto the city’s familiar main road, butterflies churn in their stomachs for an altogether different reason than their last trip to Liam’s hometown. The night air here is cool and thick with smog from the cars and factories, the streets are bustling with nightlife – no haunted faces or hints of desertion and desolation here. The distant sounds of jazz and blues drift out from the late-night clubs, neon signs sparkle against the twilight sky, men whistle and whoop and catcall, and women giggle and sashay down the streets in their sparkly dresses.

And as Liam and Zayn cruise through the city streets passing by their old haunts at the Black Rose Motel and rear up to their favorite speakeasy, it feels like coming home.

Zayn parks his bike in the alley around back and they come in through the side door all grins, eyes immediately searching out Louis and the others. Instead they land on Frank, the club’s talent scout, who, oddly, seems as if he’s avoiding their gaze as soon as he spots them.

“Frank!” Zayn calls just as the other man makes an abrupt about-face, looking as if trying to hurriedly scurry towards the kitchen door. At Zayn’s voice he stops and turns slowly, still looking a bit squirrelly, eyes still darting back to the kitchen like he’s just waiting to make a break for it even as he pastes on a smile.

“Zayn, hi, didn’t see you there.”

Zayn snorts. “Sure you didn’t. Anyways, not looking to take you away from your very important work, just looking for Louis.”

At this Frank suddenly appears even more uncomfortable, fidgeting nervously, gaze flitting everywhere but at Zayn or Liam’s faces.

“Yeah, I figured but, um…thing is…he’s not in today.”

Zayn blinks, brows furrowing. “Not in? It’s Friday. He always runs the Friday circuit.”

Frank only shrugs. “Yeah, well…not tonight.”

“Any particular reason?”

Frank looks shifty again, eyes darting about, still avoiding Zayn’s gaze, and then just shrugs once more before making a quick exit, darting for the kitchen door before Zayn can ask any more questions.

“That was…weird,” Liam says.

“Yeah,” Zayn agrees, looking about the club as if he expects to find a clue or something that might make any of what just transpired make sense.

Louis knew they were coming back in town tonight. And he _always_ runs the Friday circuit. It’s easy money. The _best_ money, as Louis himself always says. It doesn’t make any sense that he would suddenly change up his schedule without telling them, or at the very least not even be here to meet them even if he wasn’t working. And Liam doesn’t think he’s remiss in thinking the way Frank was acting seemed super suspicious. Like he was hiding something.

“Guess we’ll just go straight to the house then,” Zayn says, giving up on his survey of the club and heading back towards the side door.

He takes Liam’s hand, guiding him through the thick throng of the usual Friday night crowd and back out into the alley. Liam can’t help the sudden sense of foreboding that overtakes him and the ensuing knot of worry that settles itself in the pit of his stomach.

“You don’t think something bad has happened, do you?” he says, voice small as he climbs onto the bike behind Zayn, afraid to even voice the words out loud lest it make them come true.

“Course not, babe, I’m sure they’re fine,” Zayn answers, turning to press a quick, comforting kiss to Liam’s temple. “Frank clearly knows more than he’s letting on, but whatever’s going on I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. ‘Sides we’ll be at the house in no time where we can ask them ourselves. Don’t you worry your pretty little head.”

At that Zayn takes off, winding through city streets until they reach the block where Louis’ place is. Only to find that there’s no house there at all.

Zayn brings the bike skidding to a halt and in shock they both stumble off and over to the grass. Where the house once stood proud and tall and pristine against the night sky, now there’s just a hulking empty space. All that remains before them are piles and piles of black ash and charred hunks of wood littering the blackened ground – the only proof that anything or anyone ever even _was_ here.

At the sight Liam turns his face into Zayn’s shoulder. He’s quiet but the soft shake of his shoulders belies him and Zayn can’t do anything but hold him as he stands there stoic, unable to really process the scene before him.

There’s a sudden chill to the air that wasn’t there before and it bites at Zayn’s cheeks, makes it harder to breathe so that every breath he draws feels like a struggle. Despite the solidness of Liam in his arms Zayn’s body feels numb, his chest hollow, but deep inside he can feel something raging. A fire within. Perhaps even one that rivals the likes of the one that clearly happened here.

It builds and builds, consuming, growing, railing inside him until finally it reaches a crescendo and he can’t take it anymore.

He needs answers. Right the fuck now.

“Come on,” he says to Liam a bit more gruffly than intended. He’s not sure how long they’ve just been standing there on the sidewalk wallowing but he can't do it. He’s never been one to just take things lying down and he’s sure as hell not about to start now.

He hurtles through traffic, ignoring the sounds of car horns blaring at him. None of it matters. Right now he can only see red.

Slamming on the brakes, he parks the bike in the back alley of the club again and heads straight for the side door. Liam immediately starts to follow him but Zayn turns and shakes his head, putting a gentle hand to Liam’s chest.

“Stay here.”

“But—”

“Stay. Here. I _mean_ it, Liam. Please.”

Liam nods, watching Zayn lumber inside, the door slamming shut behind him. Liam waits about thirty seconds before he discreetly sneaks inside behind him, shuffling off to the side amongst a nearby flurry of people so that just in case Zayn happens to look back and check that Liam didn’t follow him, Liam will be too lost in the crowd for him to spot.

Keeping a close eye on Zayn, Liam watches as he locks eyes on Frank, who once again immediately attempts to scurry away, this time through the little backstage door at the bottom corner of the stage. Zayn follows him, pushing ardently through the crowd after him and, after a moment, so does Liam. Once in the backstage hallway Liam ducks down behind a trashcan and watches as Zayn immediately corners Frank and barrels into him.

“What the _fuck_ , Frank?” Zayn says with a hard shove that nearly sends the other man toppling over.

“I-I’m sorry, I—” Frank stammers, hands up in front of himself in defense.

“You’re _sorry_? You’re _fucking sorry_?” He punctuates his words with yet more shoves, sending Frank stumbling yet again. “Sorry that you didn’t think to mention there was a _fucking fire_?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you!”

Zayn gets so close that he’s right in Frank’s face, mere inches away, and his voice goes scarily soft so that it’s a struggle for Liam to make out his next words. “Well, you better goddamn figure it out right now. Because I can guarantee you won’t like what I do to you if you don’t. And one way or another I’m gonna get some goddamn answers.”

Hands still raised in defense Frank shakes his head emphatically. “Look, I don’t know much, okay, I swear. All I know is there was a fire, a bunch of the whore—um, _workers_ got scared and ran off after. Only happened just a couple weeks ago. The talk on the streets is it was planned by some religious nuts or something but nobody can prove anything and the cops sure as hell don’t care enough to look into it so they’re letting it slide. Louis’s real messed up over it. He told me when you came to just say whatever I could to keep you all away.”

“ _Told_ you to…? Louis…he’s _alive_?” Zayn takes a half-step back from him and Frank immediately looks even more guilty.

“Shit, yeah…I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think…I mean, they’re all okay. Everyone made it out, they’re just…real shaken up and struggling to get back on their feet is all. Without the house and with so many people running off, business has…well, it hasn’t been good. They’ve been working the circuit here more often than not, even on weekdays. Desperation’ll do that ya, I guess but—”

“Where are they?”

“I—what?”

“Where _are_ they?” Zayn repeats. “You said they’re all okay and if they’re working most nights here they’re obviously still in the city, but clearly they’re not here tonight and they must be staying _somewhere_ , so…where _are_ they?”

Frank goes sheepish again, ducking his head. “I, um…thing is…I’m not supposed to tell you.”

“What the hell does _that_ mean?”

“It’s just…um…” Frank mumbles something else then, but it’s too low and unintelligible for Liam to make out.

“What was that? You wanna speak up, pal?” Zayn says, edging closer again, a hint of that threatening tone bleeding back into his voice.

“He doesn’t wanna see you,” Frank mumbles, eyes still on the ground.

“Like shit he doesn’t.”

Zayn grabs him by the collar and yanks Frank towards him as Frank squirms and squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s true, I swear! I shouldn’t even be telling you this but he told me and all the workers on staff tonight that if we saw you, to say anything we could to get rid of you. Ask any of them, they’ll tell you. It’s the truth, I promise! Please don’t hit me!”

“Where the _fuck_ is he?” Zayn spits right into his face.

“I can’t! Please! He’ll send his goons after me, you _know_ he will.”

“Yeah, well, seems to me at least with them you’ve got a chance of getting away, ‘specially if you know they’re coming. With me, you won’t be so lucky. So how about you tell me and _maybe_ I’ll let you keep your ugly mug the way it is.”

Frank hesitates, eyes still screwed shut, face half turned away in desperation. “Alright, alright, he’s in the tenements on the west edge of town, down by where the brewery used to be. Third floor, middle partition.”

Zayn lets him go but still with a particularly hard shove as he does so, nearly sending Frank careening into the wall. Hurriedly righting himself, Frank mutters, “Just please don’t tell him I was the one who told you,” and then dashes down the hallway right past Liam – too preoccupied to even notice Liam in his haste – and back out the small backstage door.

Liam rises from his crouch behind the trashcan figuring there’s no point in continuing to hide when Zayn’s going to see him anyway as soon as he comes back this way himself.

“Wha— _Liam_?” Zayn says the moment Liam pops up from his hiding spot. “I thought I told you to stay outside.”

Liam shrugs, a bit sheepish. “Yeah, well…I wanted answers too.”

Zayn shakes his head, but there’s a fondness to it as he comes to sling an arm around Liam’s shoulders. “I didn’t want you to see that.”

“I don’t mind.” Liam smiles then a bit slyly. “It was kind of…sexy.”

Zayn smirks, the hand on Liam’s shoulder rising briefly to thumb at the slight blush on Liam’s cheeks. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Lots of things hopefully,” Liam teases back.

Zayn lets out a little bark of laughter as they push through the small door, muttering, “Slow your roll, tiger. We have more important things to deal with at the moment.”

Liam relents, letting Zayn guide him through the crowd and back out into the alley. They coast through the city again, heading west, watching as the buildings and houses get progressively more ragged and run-down, the streets going from pristine to littered with trash and make-shift shanties; from bustling groups of party-goers in flashy dresses and bespoke suits to the gaunt faces of the poor and starving in dirty tattered clothes, most of them clearly immigrants.

The scene is all too familiar to Zayn, the look and feel of it not very far off from the likes of where he grew up an ocean away, before he scrounged his way to London and hopped on a boat to the Land of Opportunity. Immediately he understands why Louis didn’t want to see him. After all, their stories aren’t very different and Zayn knows that were it him, the shame of having to go back to living in a place like this – to relegate himself to this kind of squalor again after all he’s achieved for himself – would eat him alive.

Finding a place to stash Zayn’s bike when they finally come upon the building is no easy feat, but after circling the surrounding blocks a couple times they finally find a decent spot in between a small copse of bushes, walking the rest of the way to the tenements. A veritable concoction of smells greets them as soon as they enter the building; a harsh and discordant mix of aromas from all sorts of different dishes and spices that should never go together but have been forced to coalesce in this poverty-ridden hodgepodge of cultures. And mixed in underneath it all is the pungent undercurrent of rotting garbage, piss, and unwashed bodies; too many people and too much waste in such a small space, not enough resources to spread among them all.

The stench only grows as they climb the stairs – a combination of the air growing warmer and thicker with less ventilation, and more and more people piled practically on top of each other in their living quarters. Children in ragged dirty clothes and unkempt hair race past them on the stairs, there’s the distant sounds of multiple babies crying, people yelling and fighting in an amalgam of languages and accents. They pass yet more people – some adults, some more children – simply sitting alone and despondent on edges of the landings or in dark corners of the hallways, an emptiness in their eyes and a resignation to their faces. Trash litters the already worn and splintered wooden floors – empty cans, food wrappers, cigarette butts, even stray needles, among broken off pieces of furniture, rotting bits of food, sullied rags and dirty newspapers that look like they’ve been used in place of toilet paper. Large patches of crumbling walls and ceilings reveal gaping holes where piping lays exposed, either already rusted or on the verge of it. So much of the infrastructure is peeling or crumbling that it’s harder to find a patch of wall or ceiling that still _is_ intact than not.

As they reach the third floor they head straight for the middle quarters and the sound of loud banging echoes through the hallway as Zayn immediately pounds the side of his fist on the door.

“We’re not interested!” they hear Louis’ voice yell through the door after the first few knocks.

Zayn resumes his banging and a moment later Louis’ voice rings out again.

“Whatever you’re selling we don’t want it!”

Again, Zayn starts up his banging.

“Just leave us alone!”

This time Zayn just keeps banging and doesn’t stop even when they hear heavy footsteps stomping angrily across the too-thin floors.

“Jesus Christ, I _said_ fuck off!” Louis yells directly through the door and when Zayn still doesn’t stop banging, Louis yanks the door open as far as it will go with the chain lock still latched in place and peers out through the narrow opening, face screwed up in anger.

The second he sets eyes on Zayn and Liam he slams it closed again without a word.

“Go away,” they hear him say again a moment later, voice softer but still resolute.

“No,” Zayn says in answer, just as firm.

“I don’t want you here.”

“I don’t care,” Zayn replies.

“I’m not letting you in.”

Zayn shrugs even though Louis can’t see him. “Your loss. Cause I’m not stopping till you do.” And with that he starts up his banging again.

Louis stands his ground even as people angrily poke their heads out of their own quarters, yelling at Zayn to shut up and stop all the racket but he ignores them all.

Through the walls they can hear people start yelling at Louis to just open the fucking door but, just as resolute, Louis ignores them too, letting Zayn continue in his barrage out of pure stubbornness. Until finally the incessant pounding grows too much and the door flies open.

Inside is not much better than outside. It’s not _quite_ a hovel just for the sheer fact that it’s part of a larger building, but by the looks of it, it almost might as well be. They’ve tried to cover the holes in the walls and ceilings with tapestries and sheets but it doesn’t do much to help the appearance. What little furniture they do have – a couple of wooden chairs and a small wooden table – is crowded in amongst them and their things. Clothes are strung up on a line in the corner closest to the window in the very back; what looks to be the only window in their partition of two interconnected rooms, a main room and a tiny kitchenette area. The clothesline billows with the breeze just behind Harry, who’s currently standing at the kitchenette’s ramshackle range in only his underwear stirring a pot. He smiles excitedly, if a little bashfully, when he sees them. Which is an interesting sight in and of itself because neither Zayn nor Liam ever imagined they’d live to see a day when _Harry_ of all people would appear bashful. The man has no shame. But Zayn knows better than anyone that living like this changes a man, even one as shameless as Harry.

To the right, in the opposite corner from the tiny kitchen area, is a set of four cots all stacked precariously atop each other like a makeshift tower of bunk beds, followed by two more small bare mattresses on the floor next to them. There’s a clear hierarchy in who gets the cots versus the mattresses, as Niall and Eleanor are currently curled up together on the right-most mattress, a few of the other house favorites on the left-most mattress, while the rest of the former house – those who stayed anyway – are squished up together two to a cot. At their entrance, Niall, who had been engrossed in a book, looks up and waves as Eleanor unfurls herself from around him and gives them a soft timid smile, before getting to her feet. On the other side of the mattresses sits the small wooden table and Eleanor immediately goes to drag the stray chairs towards it, pulling out an empty tea tray along the way to set atop it. It’s clear she’s trying to go through the usual motions just like she used to do at the house, but mid-step she pauses when all Louis does is shake his head as if to say _don’t bother_. Sheepishly, she goes back to Niall’s side.

Standing resolutely at the end of the mattresses, Louis turns to Liam and Zayn, arms crossed, looking in their direction but not quite _at_ them. There’s barely enough room here for three people to live comfortably, much less fifteen, and with the two of them inside there’s even less standing room. As it is they’re still pretty much crowded against the closed door with only about a couple of feet’s worth of space between them and Louis and a couple more feet’s space between him and Harry in the kitchenette. The beds along with the little table and chair set only leave a narrow, barely-there stretch of floor space as a walkway to where Harry is, and on the other side of him and the cooking range is just barely enough room for the cracked sink and a small metal wash basin on the floor in front of it, right underneath the window where the clothesline hangs. There’s no room for even more than two people to be moving around at one time and they make four.

“What do you want?” Louis bites out, still not quite looking directly at either of them.

“Well, it’s nice to see you, too,” Zayn says back.

Louis says nothing. Just keeps his arms crossed and turns to stare at the floor, waiting.

“Louis, we thought…” Zayn can’t seem to finish so Liam finishes for him.

“We…we thought you all were dead. We went to the house and…when we saw wh–what was left…”

Liam trials off and Louis’ still doesn’t say anything for quite some time. When he finally speaks there’s a deep bitterness to his voice. “Yeah, well, maybe you’d have been better off.”

“Better off thinking you were _dead_?” Zayn steps forward, brows furrowed in indignation. “Better off mourning you all for the rest of our lives? And who does that fucking help, huh? Other than your ego?”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about ego!” Louis shouts, whirling on him, the proximity of the small space making it so that Louis’ practically in his face now. “Don’t you fucking dare! The day you have to watch everything you’ve spent your life building burn to the fucking ground, _then_ you can talk me about fucking ego. You think I wanted to be back in a shithole like this? Huh?” Louis spreads his arms out, gesturing around him, and then finally looks Zayn directly in the eyes and turns the question back around on him. “Would _you_?”

“All I meant was I’m glad you’re okay,” Zayn says tiredly.

Arms crossed again Louis only says dryly, “Great. Now why the fuck are you all really here? Because if it was just to say that then you’ve already said all you need and you can be on your way.”

“ _Lou_ ,” Harry admonishes. “At least let them stay for dinner.”

“What fucking dinner? Three spoonfuls of canned beans each and a hunk of probably moldy bread? You really think they wanna stay for that?” Louis bites back. “In what world would they choose that when they could have a three-course meal at the fanciest fucking restaurant in town? And where are they gonna sit, huh?” At this he turns back to the two of them with a twisted smile and stretches his hand out like a stage presenter. “Take your pick, you’ve got a dirty mattress, half-broken chairs, or the worn patch of floor you’re standing on. Feel free to take your time, I know it’s a tough choice.”

Defiantly, Liam goes to join Niall and Eleanor on the mattress.

“Evidently not all that tough,” Zayn says with a cock of his head toward Liam before settling down himself in one of the chairs. “Like it or not, Louis, we’re here and we’ve seen the place, so if you’d stop shit-talking for five minutes and quit trying to kick us out maybe you’d see that we’re just glad to get the chance to see you all again regardless of where it’s taking place.”

“I, for one, would take Harry’s beans and bread over the fanciest restaurant’s unseasoned food any day,” Liam chimes in.

“There you have it,” Zayn says, looking obstinately up at Louis.

“Thank you, Liam.” Harry beams from the kitchen.

Louis only huffs and goes quiet again.

When long moments of silence pass in which he makes no move to sit or do anything other than stand there sulking stubbornly, Zayn rolls his eyes.

“Are you just gonna stand there like that the entire time?”

“So what if I am? My shitty house, my shitty rules.” Louis still refuses to look at him.

In the kitchen Harry starts ladling out thermos cups full of beans and cutting up hunks of bread, and as he precariously squeezes past a still unmoving Louis to hand Zayn his serving, Zayn kicks out the other chair from the table and juts his chin at it in invitation.

Louis resolutely ignores him for about half a minute longer before he finally sits, still not quit facing Zayn, angling himself so that he appears to be looking straight at the wall behind Zayn instead.

Harry carefully doles out everyone else’s share, handing around more cups and bread and old newspaper for napkins. Louis’ the only one that gets an actual bowl. He’s also the only one that gets a spoon instead of just bread to sop up his beans with.

There’s relative silence as everyone digs into their food which, as expected from Harry, does taste really good. No matter how little they might have, one can always trust that there’ll never be a bad meal when Harry’s around. The only thing that’s missing is something decent to wash it down with, but with the water not exactly being trustworthy with rusted pipes and all, the only they’ve got is shitty moonshine from one of the neighbors.

“It’s not as good as yours obviously, but we make do with what we’ve got,” Louis says sourly with a shrug.

It’s the first remotely nice thing Louis’ said all night and Zayn finds himself with half a smile as he swirls it around the same freshly-washed thermos cup his soup was previously in and gives it a taste.

Louis’ right. It tastes like absolute shit, but Zayn swallows it all down in one gulp anyway like it’s the best thing he’s ever had and asks Harry for another round.

Louis only rolls his eyes like he knows exactly what Zayn’s doing. Neither of them ever could fool each other. Not from the moment they first met.

“Listen…” Zayn says as Harry rushes over to pour him another cup.

Louis nods expectantly, already crossing his arms. “ _Now_ we finally get to the real reason you’re here.”

“That’s not…” Zayn sighs, long and labored, the exhaustion and high emotion of the day coupled with Louis’ sour mood wearing on him. “…what I’m about to say, that isn’t why we came here, okay? Honestly, if you knew the night we’d had, Louis…we were on such a fucking high until Frank started acting all shifty and then when we saw th–the house…We genuinely did come here just to see for ourselves that you were really all okay. You _have to_ believe that. You have to know we wouldn’t bullshit you on that.”

He pauses a moment, looking right into Louis’ eyes, needing him to know that at least on this he’s sincere. Louis looks back, if only for a moment before turning his attention back down to his cup again, fiddling with the tiny handle. Thankful that for once tonight he doesn’t have anything snarky to say back in response to that, Zayn continues.

“Look, me and Liam, we…we got some money saved up. It was supposed to be for a house for us, but…you guys need it more right now, and we can always save up again for ours.”

“I don’t want your pity money,” is all Louis says. A bitterness has seeped into his tone again, but it’s not sarcastic like before. There’s more anger in it now, a quiet but intense outrage. Not at all for the first time Zayn thinks it’s both a blessing and a curse that he and Louis are so similar. He knows all too well exactly all the things Louis’ feeling right now – the loss, the sadness, the anger, the shame, even the bristling pride – and why. Because he knows he’d been feeling them all too were it him in Louis’ shoes right now. But he also knows exactly how to tread the fine line between getting himself and Liam kicked out for good and getting Louis to see reason. Hopefully. If the man’s not too far blinded by his pride and misplaced anger, that is.

“It’s not pity money,” Zayn says slowly, carefully. “It’s family money. It’s meant to be used by family. And you guys are family.”

Louis says nothing yet again. Giving nothing away on his face, he sits completely still, gaze still trained down on his cup, the rest of the room encased in silence. When the silence has gone on too long for Zayn’s liking he sighs once again.

“Look, if it helps you feel better about it you can pay me back, but you don’t have to.”

There’s another beat of silence before Louis finally looks up, face still unreadable for a moment until he gives just the tiniest quirk of his eyebrows. “What, like a loan?”

Zayn shrugs, still trying to maintain a casual air, not let the inward tenseness of his muscles bleed through. “Sure, if that’s how you wanna look at it. But it doesn’t have to be either.”

Louis doesn’t say anything more, falls silent again in thought. But Zayn takes it as a good sign that Louis’ letting it be shown on his face that he’s thinking it over.

To sweeten the pot, and make sure to tip him just that little bit more over into agreeing, Zayn adds, “Also, I know some guys, they could go beat the shit outta the bastards that did it. Real discreet, no ties to you. They can make it look like just a string of coincidental muggings, or house robberies gone bad. They’re not quite as…artistic as your usual clean-up crew of course, but…they get the job done, and well.”

Zayn knows Louis would send his own guys if he could but they’d be too easily connected back to him. The cops might not care so much about letting arson crimes at a whorehouse slide. But were Louis to even try to seek retribution on his own, they would be all too happy to press charges against the owner of said whorehouse for attacking “good” god-fearing, church-going citizens. Especially considering it wouldn’t take too much digging to find out that Louis was a known sodomite to boot, and then they’d _really_ throw the book at him.

“And where would you and Liam stay?” Louis muses.

Zayn tries hard to keep himself from openly grinning in triumph. It’s only a hypothetical, but coming from Louis it’s as good as confirmation.

Zayn shrugs, still trying to appear nonchalant, taking another sip of the disgusting hooch. “Up to you,” he says diplomatically. “We can stay, share the place if you’ll have us. Or we can get our own place, buy up the closest plot of land next to you guys. But either way the plan was always for all of us to stick together. S’what we came home for, after all.” At this Zayn finally lets his smile show, not taking pause in the least at calling this city, or even this place, home.

“Home?” Louis repeats curiously, with a touch of incredulousness given their current locale.

“Well, yeah,” Liam pipes up from the mattress where he’s since cuddled up with Harry and Niall. “Home’s wherever you guys are, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what it looks like.”

Zayn turns back to Louis with an expectant expression that he hopes Louis reads as clearly as Zayn means it. Judging by the barest hints of a smile playing at the corners of Louis’ lips, Zayn’s pretty sure he does.

~

There’s not enough room for fifteen people and there’s most definitely nowhere near enough room for seventeen people but somehow everyone still sleeps like babies—well, everyone on the mattresses anyway—even pressed together like sardines as they are, sweaty and half-naked in the stifling heat of the mid-summer night.

In the morning Zayn wakes up halfway-off the tiny mattress with Harry’s feet somehow in both his and Liam’s faces and his cheek pressed into a thankfully not too splintered section of the worn wooden floor. Breakfast is nothing more than the same stale bread with a hunk of cheese, and he has to wait nearly half the day before he can wash all the sweat and grime of the night off him because they only have the one small metal wash basin to share between them all and heating water – or anything really – on the finicky kitchen range is hit or miss.

He still wouldn’t trade any of it for a thousand nights alone in an air-conditioned motel.

~

“Zayn, Liam, breakfast!” calls Harry.

But Zayn’s too busy wrapped around Liam to be bothered with things like moving.

The early morning sun streaming in through the windows leaves Liam’s skin sun-kissed and golden and altogether quite distracting. As is the adorable giggle Liam lets out as Zayn peppers his neck with gentle kisses and nips. Liam squirms and blushes and giggles some more, pretending to protest Zayn’s ministrations, eyes scrunching up in just that way that always makes Zayn’s heart feel too big for his chest. He always looks so beautiful like this and it makes Zayn feel like he’s the luckiest man in the world that he gets to have him, that they get to have moments like this. He can’t help but always want to take a moment to drink it all in. To lose himself in it. At least until the inevitable rude awakening.

It comes minutes later in the sound of loud banging at the door and Louis’s voice ringing out from the other side, “Oi! Stop fucking for five seconds and get your lazy arses downstairs for breakfast!”

Liam only laughs his same crinkly-eyed laugh and tugs Zayn out of bed with him.

In the kitchen Harry doles out shares of eggs and toast with jam, everyone passing full plates around their ostentatiously large dining table as Liam and Zayn join them. Louis had gone a little wild with the décor and Zayn would be lying if he said he didn’t regret, just a little, granting him full creative direction over the place. The pretentious decorations and overly lavish (and ridiculously large) furnishings weren’t exactly what Zayn had had in mind when he’d pictured his and Liam’s future home, nor when he proposed them all sharing one together. But he supposes he should’ve expected nothing less, especially knowing Louis.

Besides, the pretentious décor is rather starting to grow on him these days. For one thing it certainly makes for great late-night group cuddling when there’s a number of overly large couches and wide swathes of plush carpeting at their disposal. And he can’t deny it boosts business and the house’s working reputation when clients know that a stay here means spending at least a few hours in the utmost comfort and luxury on par with the finest of gentlemen’s clubs as opposed to a near second rate brothel like most other places of their ilk in the city these days.

But it’s especially nice for everyone to be able to sit at the table together and share meals like this like a real proper family. If he’s completely honest with himself that might be his favorite thing about it actually. Because when he sits down to breakfast on mornings like these and hears the sound of Liam’s bright and infectious laughter beside him he’s reminded of what love feels like. When he laughs with Liam and the others at the familiar procession of Harry and Niall forever arguing over whose turn it is to sit in Louis’ lap, he knows that this is what family feels like. When he walks in the door at the early hours of morning after a hard night’s work digging and toiling over his brews outside of town and finds a table full of bleary-eyed faces woken up early just to greet him and a warm plate of food waiting, he knows this is what home feels like.

He feels it every single day when he wakes up to Liam’s sunny smile and Louis’ inevitable and inexorable teasing, or when he smells the unmistakable scent of Harry’s cooking wafting up the stairs. He feels it when he comes home to the sound of laughter and rowdy conversation in the parlor, or to Liam and Harry singing together as they tidy up around the house. He feels it when he drifts to sleep on the parlor couch with a belly full of hooch, a chest full of Liam, and the soft sounds of the Victrola in the background complementing Niall’s snores. But he feels it most in these moments when they’re all together like this, when all the pain and the loss and the hardship of his life before – of all of their lives before – seem to fall away like petals on the breeze. Forgotten; replaced with newer, better, warmer memories to fill all the cracks left behind by those from their pasts. Cracks that perhaps in some small way he’s thankful for because were it not for the people that made them in the first place he might never have found his way to Liam and certainly never here, to this. But after a lifetime of searching without even realizing it, he’s found his family here. He’s found his home. And now that he has it he’s never giving it up, not for anything in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated! ❤️


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